Sustainable application development with a strong SAP focus
With Simplifier, a well-known German technology group increases efficiency in app creation across plants. The standardized technology base ensures 100% IT governance and enables the company to flexibly access internal and external developer resources.
1. Initial situation and challenge
Networking and digitization are a top priority at the international conglomerate. Accordingly, one business unit is dedicated entirely to the further development of cloud-based digital products, services, components and systems for the global infrastructure. The extensive portfolio includes network control and automation, low and medium voltage distribution, switching and control technology as well as building automation, fire protection and security, HVAC controls and energy solutions.
The realization of this vision as well as implementation of the digitization strategy resulted in a massive demand for applications: 45 applications were needed in more than 30 plants. The immense demand, full backlogs and time pressure made it impossible to create the application in the traditional way. At the same time, order had to be created: The previous autonomous application creation of the different sites led to a large number of redundancies, overlaps, duplications and a complete lack of transparency. The administrative effort was enormous due to the highly fragmented system landscape, the costs immense and an overview of who builds which applications, which data is on which system and which shadow IT applications exist was impossible.
In order to make internal processes more efficient and to exploit synergies across plants, a standardized development environment was to be introduced. The company defined the following requirements for the platform selection process:
- Simple and efficient SAP connection
- Support for a wide range of mobile and non-mobile devices
- Collaborative approach to app development
- Lowest possible operating and roll-out costs
- Sustainable application development
- And especially important: Full consideration of IT governance
2. Solution
After a thorough review of the various options, the choice fell on Simplifier’s low-code platform. Based on the platform, the company was able to establish a uniform technology basis in the division concerned. The reusability of various elements, such as connectors already used in other applications or app templates, as well as the use of the entire application lifecycle within the platform also played an important role. By replacing the various and complex toolchains, it was possible to establish a uniform process that is once again significantly more sustainable and efficient through the use of existing elements. In short, Simplifier ensures that all applications run on one platform, can be adapted at any time, and do not have to compromise on IT governance – regardless of whether an employee or the service provider creates an application.
With Simplifier, the company was able to create a unified technology base to flexibly deploy internal and external resources – with 100% IT governance.
Furthermore, the low-code platform not only supports different devices (out-of-the-box), but also dispenses with a compilation process. In this way, deployment is accelerated enormously. Thanks to the use of all apps via the Simplifier Mobile Client, a large number of applications can be launched and used via an app interface (so-called app-in-app concept). This means that not every published application has to be released separately via the app stores. These functions lead to enormous time and thus cost savings, especially with the high number of applications required, and significantly shorten the time-to-market. Thanks to Simplifier’s collaborative approach, it is also possible for employees from the business and IT departments to work on the same app at the same time.
In addition, the platform’s strong SAP focus was also convincing: Simplifier offers its own SAP namespace for interfaces that supports the entire range of SAP transactions in the SAP ECC core. The wide range of standardized and configurable interfaces allows quick and easy connection of the company’s SAP and non-SAP systems. SAP close functions such as user authentication via SAP SSO also increase usability in everyday life and ensure a high level of acceptance among employees.
3. Results
Due to the high urgency, the first required apps were created by a Simplifier implementation partner. Despite hiring external service providers, the company always maintained an overview with Simplifier: The graphical configuration ensures traceability of the app creation process at all times. In the next step, the topic of Citizen Development was pushed in order to optimize and further develop the resulting apps in-house. Together with the company, Simplifier developed a training concept tailored to their individual needs. Both the app builders and the requirements managers received comprehensive training and were empowered to create applications. This means that the company is no longer dependent on the availability of external service providers, but can use them flexibly in combination with internal resources. The IT department can assign necessary roles and rights to business departments and service providers for application creation. This ensures that the apps developed comply with the overarching IT governance and that no uncontrolled shadow IT is created. Following the successful establishment of Citizen Development, over 40 employees from the specialist departments are now involved in the development process. The approach is particularly valuable in times of a shortage of skilled workers, because it not only significantly accelerates application creation and relieves the backlog, but at the same time ensures that IT experts can devote themselves to fine-tuning while Citizen Developers lay the foundations.
In this way, the company was able to go live with ten apps in the first year with Simplifier, despite limited personnel resources. The ROI could already be achieved by creating and launching one app and was thus less than one year. It was not only the significantly reduced development costs that played a role here: in combination with the faster roll-out, the benefits of the created application were able to unfold their effect after only a short time. The company was able to significantly increase efficiency in the corresponding process and reduce process costs and expenses for troubleshooting.
With the help of the standardized platform, the company can now respond more quickly to new needs and requirements. The time-to-market of new apps and updates has been reduced to 50 percent compared to custom development thanks to the low-code platform. At the same time, uniform technology basis has almost completely solved the cross-plant problem of inefficient duplication and uncontrolled shadow IT.
4. Outlook
In the meantime, the company has already implemented more than 30 apps within the business unit with Simplifier, which are used by more than 4,000 employees. Further use cases are already in the starting blocks. The high degree of configuration in the creation of user interfaces, processes and data connections has accelerated the application creation process and reduced the ROI.
